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HEROINE- the time then and the time now

Wednesday Sept. 19. I got up early in the morning and like any other Delhiite got hold of the Delhi Times and started flipping through the pages. Well, before I could even flip through to the second page, my eyes were struck with a beautiful picture of Soha Ali Khan in the front page. That was her look in Deepa Mehta’s upcoming release, ‘Midnights children’. Quite frankly, I was glued to that picture for the next 20 minutes or so. There was something ethereal about the whole look. It was hard to pin down just one particular thing or quality about the pic which made it stand out of the whole lot. I kept looking on and on. And then! Finally rang the bell. Yes. The innocence. The vulnerability. The mystic. The mystery. How could I not see it?  

People often claim that the heroines of the yesteryears used to radiate a certain charm, much of it could be attributed to that quality of innocence which they bring to their on-screen personas. May it be Madhubala from ‘Mughal-E-Azam’, Nargis from ‘Shree 420’, Meena Kumari from ‘Pakeeza’ or Sharmila Tagore from ‘Anuradha’.  However with the beginning of the 70’s era, heroines started getting wrapped up in controversies.  Don’t we know how much fuss was made of Simi Garewal in ‘Mera Naam Joker’, Zeenat Aman in ‘Satyam Shivam Sundaram’ or Mandakini in ‘Ram Teri Ganga Maili’, all of them accused of showing off bare skin in their movies? In fact most of the heroines from Raj Kapoor’s film production company had to face such allegations. Apparently the man himself wasn’t spared either (accused of not letting his heroines wear a bra).  

Fully dressed, minimally dressed or undressed- these were the parameters for measuring one’s so-called on-screen ‘innocence’.  

Let’s just try giving it a thought, and recollect some of the names from the 80’s-90's -- Sridevi from ‘Mr. India’- portraying a single, working woman, completely on her own in a city like Mumbai, mostly dressed up in skirts and blouse with an occasional translucent chiffon sari when it’s pouring cats and dogs (I do not intend to mock at her. For me, she redefined vivaciousness in that song). Did not her character have a certain innocent quality to it? Shabana Azmi from 'Masoom', Smita Patil from 'Namak Halal' or Meenakshi Shashadri from ‘Damini’- playful, charming, even occasionally flirtatious and apparently an iconoclastic Indian woman who goes all the way for justice (Frankly, there were problems in this too. But we shall not go there). There was a certain naughty streak to her character, and so was in the one played by Madhuri Dixit in ‘Hum apke hain kaun’- practically a brat, ‘khurafati’ to be precise. How could we forget Tabu in ‘Astitva’, accused of infamy by her husband for having borne a child from her dance teacher before marriage and having kept it concealed from her husband even after. Quite frankly, Tabu’s character for me radiated a never-ever-found innocence- vulnerable and believable. What innocence are people talking about? Didn’t Meena Kumari play a courtesan too, a profession not highly valued or considered prestigious in the Indian society, whichever generation it might be?  

I cannot help mentioning this. If for a moment, one forgets the preposterous body of work Kareena Kapoor has presented in her entire career and focus only on her performance in ‘Refugee’ which I think is her best till date and which she hasn’t been able to reproduce, did not her character there look equally believable and portrayed with conviction? There is honestly a never-ending list of actresses who still succeed in holding that innocence even today. I can come up with a thousand names right here right now. Karisma Kapoor from ‘Zubeida’, Vidya Balan from ‘Parineeta’ or even Illeana d’cruz from the currently running
‘Barfi’- classic, enigmatic and almost ethereal.  

You know what, that spark is still alive. All we need to do is just find it and remember that at the end of the day, it is people like you and me who define the standards for ‘innocence’.  

Photo courtesy: http://www.indicine.com/images/gallery/bollywood/movies/midnights-children/73444-9-large.jpg

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